


lost kitten

by glitterforplaster (ineffableangel)



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Daddy Issues, Dom/sub, M/M, Trans Male Character, it just deals with some of ronan's father feelios, this isn't daddy kink don't worry i wouldn't do that to you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-04
Updated: 2015-01-04
Packaged: 2018-03-05 10:42:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3117131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ineffableangel/pseuds/glitterforplaster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Gansey,” Ronan said, abrupt, urgent, catching at the hem of Gansey’s shirt as he tried to walk away. “Wait. Please. I need—” He stopped.</p><p>Gansey lingered. “What?”</p><p>Ronan closed his eyes, still clutching Gansey’s t-shirt in one smooth brown hand, hands that Gansey admired, loved, hands he’d seen do beautiful and terrible things. Gansey was fairly sure this t-shirt belonged to Ronan, or had, at one point. It hung just a little too big on him, the shoulders a little too broad. “I need you,” he said, quiet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	lost kitten

**Author's Note:**

> title from lost kitten by metric, which is _so_ ronan/gansey, seriously, check it out. warnings for self-destruction, underage drinking, daddy issues, d/s, discussion of the death of a parent as per canon, and vague mentions of self-harm. don’t worry; this isn’t what you think it is. ronan is black and latino; niall lynch was latino (puerto rican, specifically, though he was born in ireland for some reason, thanks for that canon monkey wrench stiefvater); aurora lynch is black; gansey is white (at least this time). language key in the ending notes, though i think you can figure most of it out.

It was not unusual for Ronan Lynch to come home late, either in the dead of night or into the early hours of the morning; sometimes Gansey smelled cheap beer on his breath, or cigarettes, or something else, and sometimes Ronan was angry, or cried, or threw things, though not at Gansey, never at Gansey. Sometimes he shut himself in his bedroom, and sometimes he had his fits out in the open. Sometimes Gansey let him be, if that was what he wanted; sometimes Ronan didn’t know what he wanted, didn’t care, hated himself more than anything, pried his body open and tried to tear himself out, and Gansey was there to pick up the pieces. He was accustomed to Ronan’s seemingly inherent fucked-up-ness, the way he was accustomed to his own demons, his anxious tremors. No— that was cruel. He wasn’t _accustomed_ to it; he never would be. It shook him down to his bones to see Ronan’s cool, disaffected façade so cracked, his best friend and brother and the boy he loved so ripped apart by the terrors that haunted his nights, monsters that he fed himself, monsters that were part of him, belonged to him, like hunting dogs. No, Gansey had not made any semblance of peace with Ronan’s frequent breakdowns. Perhaps it was more accurate to say that he had come to expect them.

This, however, he had not expected: the moment Gansey opened the door for Ronan, having heard the familiar scratching of a tipsy teenager trying to fit a large and highly specific key into a small and highly specific lock, Ronan fell into him.

“Christ!” Gansey cried, clutching Ronan to his chest, hands hooked under his arms. Ronan’s head lolled forward onto Gansey’s shoulder, face pressed into his neck. Gansey could feel his heart beating hard and fluttery through his shirt, his breath shaky against the hollow of Gansey’s throat.

“Ronan, what’s wrong?” Gansey said, swallowing panic, and Ronan laughed, a wild, high-pitched sound that petered out as abruptly as it had begun.

“Everything,” Ronan said, lifting his head so that he and Gansey were face to face, chest to chest, inches apart. “Thanks for catching me. Sorry to be a damsel in distress. I think my knees gave out. Slackers. Don’t they know they don’t get vacation days? It’s not in the fuckin’ contract.”

“Where have you been? Have you been drinking?” Gansey asked, breath warm on Ronan’s cheek. He feared the answer.

Ronan shook his head. His fingernails dug into Gansey’s biceps through his shirt. “Dreaming,” he said, eyes unfocused, looking at something past Gansey’s head, something he couldn’t see.

“Nightmares again?” Gansey asked. He hated to see Ronan like this, hated the way dreaming took him out of himself, away from reality and from Gansey. He went somewhere, when he was like this, somewhere Gansey couldn’t reach, couldn’t even hope of imagining; it wasn’t Monmouth, and it wasn’t Cabeswater. It wasn’t even the Barns. It was a place only dreamers could touch, and Gansey was terrified that, one day, he wouldn’t be able to call Ronan back from it.

“I think,” Ronan answered. He sighed. “I don’t know. It’s so hard to tell, anymore, what’s a nightmare and what’s... They keep changing. I dreamt about him this time. He won’t wake up. I keep trying to wake him up and he won’t wake up.”

Gansey didn’t have to ask who Ronan meant; he knew, just as surely as he knew Ronan would not, perhaps could not, speak his father’s name. Not here.

Ronan shifted, tried to stand, and Gansey wrapped an arm around his waist, helping him to his feet. Ronan slung his arm round Gansey’s neck, and, together, they shuffled forward into the living room, where Ronan collapsed on the couch, head in his hands.

“He won’t wake up,” he said, the words muffled against his palms. “He just lies there in a pool of his own brains like a bastard, because he was a bastard. You know he never told me or Declan or Matthew he loved us? Not once. That was Mom’s job. She was the nurturer. He just spun his fucking webs and his stories and his lies and said my name like he meant to say something else entirely, every time. Asshole.”

Gansey knew Ronan meant it. He also knew that Ronan was born already in his father’s pocket, the favorite son, the heir, the dream prodigy. Ronan forgot: Gansey had seen Niall Lynch in action, a summer and a lifetime ago, and the love that man harbored for his middle child like a ship never set out to sea was a love that would have moved mountains. Ronan was always saying he hated liars, but he lied every moment, spun the same webs Niall Lynch had, tapestries of the finest side-steps and thread omissions, and then he lied about that, too. Gansey often wondered if someday they would find the missing pieces of all the half-truths Ronan told, the abandoned remains of a laugh or a reckless midnight drive or a _Why, no, Gansey, I’ve no earthly idea how I suddenly acquired this split lip, these bruised knuckles, this bleeding temple_. Perhaps they were stuffed away in the walls of the attic at the Barns, collecting dust, waiting to be claimed. After all, dreaming was a sort of lying; it was pure creation, fabrication, and Ronan, its reluctant architect.

“I’m going to get you a glass of water,” Gansey said. Despite what Ronan had told him, he wasn’t convinced there hadn’t been drinking involved, either way. Ronan often used alcohol to numb his nerves before he dreamt. “Stay right here, okay? Don’t go running off on me, now.”

“Gansey,” Ronan said, abrupt, urgent, catching at the hem of Gansey’s shirt as he tried to walk away. “Wait. Please. I need—” He stopped.

Gansey lingered. “What?”

Ronan closed his eyes, still clutching Gansey’s t-shirt in one smooth brown hand, hands that Gansey admired, loved, hands he’d seen do beautiful and terrible things. Gansey was fairly sure this t-shirt belonged to Ronan, or had, at one point. It hung just a little too big on him, the shoulders just a little too broad. “I need you,” Ronan said, quiet. “Can you— I need— I need you to fuck me. Please.”

All at once, Gansey understood. It was an arrangement they had, of a sorts, a game they played, though they both knew there was nothing pretend about it. They were always real with each other; raw and honest and open with how they felt about each other. This was merely an extension of their relationship, however they defined it, attached at the hip and the heart and the hands and the soul. All else fell away. Their daily hang-ups — Ronan’s thing for Adam, Gansey’s thing for Blue, Noah’s thing for Ronan — seemed childish and inconsequential compared to what they were to each other.

Sometimes, Ronan wanted to hurt himself; sometimes, Gansey had to pick up the pieces. It was better that way, for Ronan to give up control, to let someone else lead, to save him from himself. It was safer. Gansey would do anything for Ronan, and Ronan would do anything for Gansey, especially if he was ordered to.

“You need me,” Gansey said softly, gently uncurling Ronan’s fingers from his shirt.

“I need you. Take me out of my head. It’s dark in here.”

“Okay, then,” Gansey said, and led Ronan by the hand down the dark hallway. Ronan stumbled only once, on their way into his bedroom, neatly missing a skateboard with two wheels, an object he’d dreamt and discarded. His room was full of them. They crowded his shelves and his floor, were stuffed under his bed, made homes in his corners, misshapen and misplaced, misfit toys without sense or rationality. Gansey suspected his closet might contain an actual skeleton. It was macabre poetry; Ronan kept the junk around because he understood it, had created it. It was like introducing the most secret parts of himself to every visitor, showing them his innermost workings, the things he thought up when he was alone, the gears that made him tick, though they would never know it.

And there the true Ronan stood, in the middle of it all. King.

“How do you want me?” he asked. Gansey, still holding his hand, brushed a thumb across his knuckles, and nodded silently at the bed.

“On your back. Shirt and socks off. Pants unbuttoned, but you can keep them on.”

Ronan nodded, and stripped, leaving his shirt crumpled in a pile of grey fabric on the floor. He splayed out across the bed, long legs falling open. His thin, elegant fingers unhooked the button of his jeans with ease, like he’d done this for Gansey a thousand times, instead of only five. He was a different person, when he needed this; his ingrained distrust of authority didn’t seem to extend to Gansey.

“Good boy,” Gansey said, closing the door behind him. He crossed the room and leant against the bed frame, sliding off his own shirt and socks, and his worn flannel pajama pants, last years’ Christmas gift from Aurora Lynch— she claimed everyone should have a good pair of flannel pajama pants, not the frivolous silk sets his family had been fond of buying him, when he still lived at home. He laid all of his clothes on the desk, beside pens and paper and more miscellaneous dream objects, taking his time. He left his binder on; he knew he shouldn’t, but it made him feel better, more himself.

“Gansey,” Ronan said. He didn’t beg, but Gansey heard it in his voice, rough and desperate.

Gansey didn’t answer him, but he moved closer, sitting on the edge of the bed beside Ronan’s thigh, fingertips tracing the V of his hips, the flat, firm muscle of his stomach. Ronan was beautiful. This was a fact, though not everyone saw it that way. The harsh glint of his perfectly straight teeth, his shaved head and dark skin, the cracks of his palms, the ever-changing rotation of bruises and scrapes from boxing and fighting and being generally reckless with his body; all these Gansey knew intimately. He was shorter than Ronan by a few inches, but from this position, he held the cards, and Ronan knew it, relished in it. His hands looked big and pale curled around Ronan’s hips.

“You have hands like him,” Ronan said, arms stretched behind his head, watching Gansey touch him. He was breathing shallowly, already vulnerable, overwhelmed, hard and aching in the confines of his jeans. “Like my father. I mean, you’re a white boy, obviously, but— You touch me so delicately, like I’ll break. Like he did. Is that weird? That I want that? It’s not a kink thing. You’re nothing like him, and thank God. But you have his hands.”

“It’s not weird,” Gansey said, tugging Ronan’s jeans down his thighs. Ronan lifted his hips to help. “You just want someone to take care of you the way your father never did.”

“Okay, Freud,” Ronan said, sort of gasping, halfway gone, although Gansey had done nothing but undress him. “Can you suck me off now, or are we going to talk out my issues with my big brother, too?”

“You are not calling me _Daddy_ ,” Gansey said firmly, in case Ronan was getting ideas.

“Wow, buzzkill. How do you feel about _sir_? Or something kingly. _Your Highness_? No? Damn.”

Gansey brushed the backs of his fingers across the bulge in Ronan’s underwear, until his breath hitched, a warning as much as a reward. Ronan reached down and clenched his fingers in Gansey’s hair. When Gansey spoke, it was soft. “You can make noise, but you can’t direct, do you understand? You’ll take what I give you. Everything I give you. What’s your safeword?”

“ _Desino_ ,” Ronan recited obediently. “Latin for _cease_ and _desist_. Or _murder squash_. English for _irritating._ In case I forget the first one. Can I speak otherwise?”

“You can,” Gansey allowed, “but you won’t, unless it’s to beg me for more. I’m going to take you apart at the seams. I’m going to make you scream. Okay?”

Ronan swallowed hard. “Okay."

Gansey tugged Ronan’s boxers down. His cock curved against his thigh, flushed and pearling with pre-come. Gansey kissed the inside of Ronan’s thigh. He leaned forward and pressed another kiss to the tip of his cock, open-mouthed and wet, dragging his tongue against sensitive skin, inhaling the scent of sweat and sex and Ronan, who always smelled like the green leaves of that first summer, the summer they met. Ronan sucked in a breath, fingers tightening in Gansey’s hair, hips pushing upward, desperate for something more substantial. Gansey held him down with one hand, settled steady and firm on his leg.

“Don’t,” Gansey said. Ronan stilled immediately. “Good boy.”

“ _Hazme el amor_ ,” Ronan said, letting his head fall back against the pillows. “Please. Fuck me. _Querido_.”

Gansey felt his heart skip. Ronan rarely called him pet names, except when they were together like this, and even then he did it in Latin or Spanish, languages that, the first handful of times, Gansey had trouble understanding. It wasn’t that he was embarrassed. Ronan was never embarrassed. It was that he felt uncomfortable expressing feelings as private and pure as the ones he had for Gansey in English. The language his father had spoken at home, before Ronan’s life fell to pieces, and the language they all spoke in his dreams, where he could pretend he still had a family— these suited him better, _te quiero_ and _te amo_ more real to him than _I love you_ , more honest. He was always saying he hated lies, and liars.

“Gansey,” Ronan said, and Gansey touched the scar that hugged the curve of his knee, just once, like a promise, before he leaned forward again and took Ronan into his mouth. Ronan whimpered, high and involuntary, biting his knuckle to keep quiet as Gansey went down on him.

“Gansey,” Ronan said again, gasping it, trembling with the effort of keeping his hips still. “Shit. _Mi tesoro, mi corazón_. So good, come on. Give it to me.”

Gansey breathed deep and shaky, making a huffed, wet sound around Ronan’s cock. He loved Ronan’s voice, the lilt of his accent, the way he quivered when Gansey sucked at the head of his dick. No one else had heard him like this; no one else knew him the way Gansey did. The thought made a wicked, covetous pleasure curl in his belly. Contrary to popular belief, or perhaps, considering Adam’s feelings on the matter, and likely their classmates’ at Aglionby, perfectly in keeping with popular belief, when it came to the things that he loved and the ideals he strived for, Richard Gansey III was an incredibly selfish person. He wanted Glendower for himself; he wanted that favor for himself; he wanted Ronan for himself.

“No one else touches you like this, do you understand?” Gansey said, pulling off, voice husky from cock-sucking. “No one else.”

“Yes,” Ronan said. “Yes. No one else. No one else. You’re _mi cielo_ , my world, my sky. My brother. Tell me you love me.”

“I love you.” Gansey didn’t hesitate; it was the truth. Ronan hated liars. He reached up and caught Ronan’s hand from his hair, turning it over to press a kiss to his wrist, where faint white scars still clung from so many night terrors, reminders of a time before Ronan understood how to rule them. “I love you. I love the way you laugh. I love the way you sing when I suck you off. I love your hands.”

Ronan didn’t respond, but he closed his eyes, satisfied with this, combing his fingers through Gansey’s hair as Gansey returned to sucking him off. On a night like tonight, when the moon was full and the air hummed with potential, with magic and with secrets and with shadows, Ronan had bared his soul to Gansey not once, but twice; first, in the living room, with talk of his father, and now here, in his bedroom, in the house they shared together, with a declaration of love. It was not the first time he had said it, nor was it the first time Gansey had returned the sentiment, but something about it felt different. Ronan was rarely completely sincere, always masking his truths beneath ironies and cynicisms, but there could be no doubt that this, he meant completely.

Gansey thought it was about time Ronan was rewarded.

Gansey sat up, Ronan’s legs still stretched out on either side of his waist. His packer rubbed against his arousal with every movement, sending sparks shivering up his spine. He pushed it out of the way and pressed a desperate finger to his clit, eyes fluttering closed. He’d been wet since Ronan had propositioned him, but this had been for Ronan, and not for him, so he’d held back. Ronan watched him, now, silent but hyper-attentive, eyes tracking every twitch of Gansey’s hand.

When Gansey had regained some of his composure, he swung his legs over the edge of the bed and patted his thigh. “Come here,” he said. Ronan slid off the bed and onto the floor, on his knees in front of Gansey. He looked up expectantly.

“Eat me out,” Gansey ordered, and Ronan’s eyes glinted. This was his favorite thing to do in the bedroom, and Gansey rarely felt in the mood to let him; gender dysphoria was a fickle and unpredictable mistress.

Ronan slipped off Gansey’s boxers, setting his packer aside. He pressed a thumb to Gansey’s clit, grinning when Gansey whined, hips jerking. Ronan leaned forward and dragged his tongue roughly against Gansey. Gansey sucked in a breath and dug his nails into Ronan’s bare shoulders, rocked forward onto his tongue. Ronan moaned against Gansey, soft and breathy, reaching down to squeeze himself.

“Good boy,” Gansey gasped, ragged, fucking Ronan’s face. “Good boy, sweet boy, yeah, touch yourself, just like that, come on, Ronan. You love this, don’t you? Love taking orders, fuck, such a good boy for me. You gonna come for me?”

Ronan shuddered and came in his hand, still worked up from earlier. Gansey followed soon after, legs shaking. Ronan kept dragging his tongue over Gansey’s over-sensitive clit, relentless, until Gansey cried out and pushed his head away. Ronan, still on his knees, leant forward and rested his cheek on the edge of the bed, fucked out and faraway. His face was wet, his eyes glassy.

“Was I okay?” he asked, voice hoarse.

“Yeah,” Gansey said softly, fondly, brushing a hand over the baby fuzz at the nape of Ronan’s neck. “You were perfect. You feeling alright?”

“Tired,” Ronan said.

Gansey nodded. “Let’s get you to bed, yeah?”

Gansey helped Ronan to his feet, setting him on the bed and fetching a warm washcloth from Monmouth’s joint-bathroom-kitchen monstrosity. By the time he came back a few minutes later, Ronan seemed more coherent. He was wearing Gansey’s pajama pants, which made Gansey grin for some disgusting, domestic reason he could not explain, even though it meant he’d have to wash them tomorrow. He opened Ronan’s dresser and tugged on a pair of _his_ pajama pants, as revenge.

“Hey,” Ronan said, pointedly not commenting on the stolen pajamas. Gansey handed him the washcloth, sitting beside him on the bed. Ronan swiped it across his cheek, where a streak of come still remained, and then tossed it onto on the floor across the room, with the rest of his clothes.

“How do you feel?” Gansey asked quietly, hand on Ronan’s knee.

Ronan hunched his shoulders. “I don’t know. Weird. Ashamed.”

“Yeah,” Gansey said, because he always did, after. “Come on, grumpy. Snuggle time.”

Ronan folded gratefully into Gansey’s arms, arm slung around his waist, face buried in his neck. His skin was hot, almost feverish. “I’m sorry,” he said into Gansey’s throat, shaky.

“Don’t apologize,” Gansey said, kissing the top of his head. “You have nothing to be sorry for. You didn’t ask me for anything I wasn’t completely willing to give, okay? I wanted it.”

“But—”

“Ronan.” Gansey said it in his order-giving voice, leaving no room for argument, and Ronan fell silent.

After a moment, he said, hushed, on the verge of tears, like he was divulging a secret, “I miss him, Gansey. I miss him so much. How can I miss someone I’m so fucking angry at all the time? He left me nothing but a house I couldn’t visit and a puzzle I couldn’t figure out and a messed-up head full of his stories, but, God, I _miss_ him. He was my father.”

“I know,” Gansey said, running his thumb across Ronan’s hip in circles. “I know. It’s okay. It’s gonna be okay. He’d be so proud of you, Ronan, if he could see you.”

Ronan snorted. “What, in bed with my best friend? I don’t know if you know this, Gansey, but you’re a boy. Mom’s okay with it, but I don’t think my dad would’ve been. A street-racing suicidal semi-alcoholic who likes getting fucked by other guys, oh, yeah, that’s the kind of son he only ever dreamt of. Not to mention I’m failing ninety percent of my classes, currently, I’m sure you’ve heard about that.”

“Okay, shut up now,” Gansey said. “Your sexuality is not a flaw. As for the other stuff, I think it’s pretty well cancelled out by you being fucking amazing. I’ve traveled all over the world, Ronan, and I’ve never met anyone like you.”

“Mm.”

“I’m serious.” Gansey caught Ronan’s jaw, turning it gently so that they were eye-to-eye. “Who else do you know that can speak to trees, huh? Who else can pull objects from the edge of perception and turn them into something real? It doesn’t matter if you’re failing your classes. You’ve fought a dragon, and saved your brother's life, and— and whistled Irish jigs in a fucking scary dark cave. You’re incredibly strong. And I love you. I might have your father's hands, at least according to you, but you have his gift, and his heart. Okay?”

Ronan swallowed hard, looked away. “Okay,” he said, but even he didn’t sound as though he believed it. “Will you— Will you stay? Just for tonight. I don’t want to be alone with my thoughts, not right now.”

“Yeah,” Gansey said, pressing a kiss to Ronan’s forehead. “Yeah, of course. Always. Always.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> desino (latin) - cease, desist, stop  
> hazme el amor (spanish) - make love to me  
> querido (spanish) - sweetheart, darling  
> te quiero (spanish) - i want you  
> te amo (spanish) - i love you  
> mi tesoro (spanish) - my treasure  
> mi corazón (spanish) - my sweetheart, my love  
> mi cielo (spanish) - my heaven, my sky, my world
> 
> it's my ultimate headcanon that niall lynch spoke spanish to his family at home; aurora's spanish was broken at best, but ronan often spoke it with him, and continues to speak it after he dies. matthew, being the youngest and having the least amount of time with his father, speaks very little, mostly what he's picked up or what ronan has taught him. declan flat-out refused to learn it, due to it being his father's language, as well as racist shit he listened to at school and internalized; he regrets this desperately after niall's death, though he'd never admit it to his siblings.
> 
> maybe i'll write another fic about it.


End file.
